1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a method of executing a plurality of steps that are performed sequentially in temporal order under computer control.
2. Description of the Related Art
The design of molds used in the injection molding of plastic and molds used in the casting of cast parts had previously required skilled work in determining the shape of the cavity used to form the mold from the design drawings for the product, and in providing slide cores and loose cores for undercut areas and opening areas. Recently, with the appearance of three-dimensional CAD, it is possible to obtain product design values as 3D digital data. If the product design values are obtained as 3D digital data, it is possible to determine the shapes of mold cavities from that 3D digital data, thereby greatly simplifying mold design. However, even if mold design is performed using 3D digital data, the current situation is such that many items that require the work of skilled workers still remain, including the design of slide cores and loose cores to handle complex product shapes.
One proposal is to divide the design work process into a plurality of steps and assign each step by specialty to a different worker, but with such a division of labor, it takes time and effort to pass work along, so it is difficult to reduce the number of days required for design. In addition, even after the design of the mold is completed, there is no guarantee that the work of preparing numerical control data (NC data) for the fabrication of molds based on the design data, and the work of machining the molds will be performed efficiently and without delay. Accordingly, the design and fabrication of molds was a problem that required a large amount of time extending to several months.
In addition, not restricting ourselves to the design and fabrication of molds, when any work consisting of a plurality of steps is performed consecutively in a specific order, the establishment of coordination among the various steps is necessary for the work to be performed efficiently.